The Affecting of the Weal of Men
by Wanderlustlover
Summary: Marian was good. Good in a way that none of the lads understood entirely.


**Notes: **Title from Francis Bacon's _Essays, Civil and Moral: Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature._ For Herdivineshadow, because I haven't given her much to love on lately, in game or in getting to watch and chat about new episodes, because of my being all stuck in school stuff the last few weeks. I was thinking of you a lot during this ep. Will Scarlett POV, with shots of Marian/Robin, Marian/Guy, and if you squinted really, really hard at it maybe Will/Marian.

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Marian was good.

Good in a way that none of the lads understood entirely.

Robin and Much might have grown up with her, but they'd had to go; for Lion Heart and the people's freedom, and Allan might have come in an out, but no longer than dalliance's time. Djaq was in her own land and John was already an outlaw, when Will Scarlett was the only person still here to watch it all happen.

He watched her fall in love and fall apart. He saw what duty and belief in the right cost her. He watched the light dwindle in her eyes and on the cusp of dying, sputtering, burst into a willful stubbornness no one could define or explain or control. Somewhere the fire in her belly had found a way to restraint her hands, even as her tongue dared to throw barbed darts at those men and women who removed her father. He saw the food from her house donated through the maid, before she was released, down to the people in Knighton they'd been pressed into the care of when they were tossed from the castle as little better than dirt upon the new sheriff's rug.

But this hadn't stopped her. Her kindness existed besides her cold bitterness, coming out when she helped children and when she walked, talking to the dwindling crowds on market day. He saw it himself when she came by their way, making sure always to tell his father she needed something. A stable door mended, a box made, a lock replaced. All which weren't that bad and all which could have been gotten cheaper in Nottingham. But she just smiled and went on her way, and they were both too grateful and too ashamed to tell her no.

The day when it came out that that Marian was the Nightwatchman Much had sputtered into a worried little rant, while John gave a disapproving look and Djaq, still a he then, just grinned into his bowl, and Will had just laughed into his shoulder, trying to play it off as a cough. Because it didn't surprise him. In fact it made more sense than most anything had, save fighting for their country at Robin's side, since having to leave his father and brother.

She'd been someone they all looked up to, but looking back with that, it was treasonous to make the comparison but it made her saintly. Robin was all laughs and nobility, but he wanted to see the people, and his name was attached to his deeds. The people loved the Nightwatchman because of the work he'd done, because of how much help he'd given all those years in food and medicine. It was whispered he was phantom or angel, or demon on horseback sometimes.

But Marian?

That made so much sense.

Robin gave them faith in a future they could touch, but the Nightwatchman-No, Marian-Marian had steadfastedly made sure they still had hearts and hope, even if it was a starved hope and a nearly beaten heart, left by the time he reached the shores of England once more. It was still there because of that small nurturing touch.

Because of Marian, who no one knew how to say no to when she smiled and convinced you to keep an extra few coins for doing your work faster than she expected or who was sending supper home with you because she was just about to toss it to the slops anyway, she wouldn't and couldn't have her name out. It wasn't who she was. She didn't need or want or crave the fame. She just looked after her people. Whether they were the ones that were originally hers or the ones she'd been foisted upon as Lady to later.

When Robin shoved the ring into his hand saying _She has to live, even if no one else does_, Will knew what he meant. Because he was Robin. He couldn't live without her, they couldn't live without each other, and they were all her people, even if no one would call it that because no one but the lads knew the truth of her four prior years. Something they saw as a number, Will felt it and if other people knew they would have to. Robin was new, but Marian and the Nightwatchman had been their shield, their blanket for years of true cold where no defender existed.

Robin felt it. They all saw it in Robin when he thought she was dead without knowing. To have her die knowing, to have her die while Will was holding that ring and had a say in it. He'd never have let that happen again. Not to the people or the Robin. He owed them all that much if nothing else after what he'd done only months earlier in the service of his father's memory.

So it might come as a surprise to everyone else, but not to Will when he realized once again how truly good Marian was. Not because she did great deeds, but because she did the little ones. The small ones that contained a word or a look or an encouragement of direction or her own simple inability to control her passion for the people.

He'd thought when he'd seen Guy take her aside this was the only way to save Marian, and through her Robin and through him England, was going to be delivering the news that would once again break Robins' heart. She'd be alive, but in guys hands again. Guy was crazy, deluded and used. He saw how he moved her in a panic, saw her anger and his desperation. He saw the moment she didn't look to Guy, or to him to be saved from Guy by, but instead her eyes looked to the people.

Even facing death, facing entrapment, she saw none of it. She only saw the people. Still.

Will felt his stomach turn, in an emotion he told himself was worried guilt, when Guy dropped to his knee next to her.

But it wasn't guilt at all he felt when he heard the heavy boots come running through the door only hours later. It wasn't guilt at all when he heard Guy's voice, ring out over the terrified throng, _If I'm going to die, I'm going die by your side._

Because he knew.

He knew what he always knew.

That Marian was simply that good.

It wasn't an act she put on or a choice she made.

Her humanity, her truth, her goodness had reached so far as to turn the heart of one of the two worst men in Sherwood. A man who had used her as chattel, who was breaking all the rules, all of the assumptions, for the simplest thing she gave them each day, and the one thing he was sure she didn't see at all in him when she looked at him: love.

But Will saw it; in her awe filled face, and the way Guy held his sword to the door, guarding Marian without touching her, the way they whispered close in the last moments before the attack. Will saw it because he was the quiet one, because he watched and he knew people, and he knew that this-this unpredictable, uncontrollable, unbelieved in thing-could only be coming closer and closer to a culmination that would surprise them all.


End file.
